


Easier in the Rain

by Lost_On_You



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, My First Fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:56:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28659840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lost_On_You/pseuds/Lost_On_You
Summary: Piper learns something new from Blue.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Piper Wright
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	Easier in the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Brief One-Shot that I couldn't get out of my head.

Thunder awoke Piper from a dreamless sleep. At first, she did not know what had woke her, but the successional flash of lightning through the gaps of the walls and roof focused her attention to the soft pattering of rain. Usually Piper found the sounds of rain against the metal roofing to be comforting. Every drop tonight reminded her of the woman asleep on her couch, mere feet away from her.

Thoughts debating whether or not she should check on the woman swam in her mind, keeping her from falling back to sleep. Blue, Anais, was a full grown woman. She had seen war and death, watched as an Atom Bomb, _the_ Atom Bomb, fell and detonated. Anais didn't need some nosy reporter checking in on her. As much as Piper wanted to chalk it up as part of her older sister protectiveness, for there was times when Nat was younger that Piper sat with her and rocked her in her arms to get her back to sleep during a storm, she couldn't let the feeling go.

It was the same feeling she got when she knew someone wasn't telling her the full story. That they were lying or that she was missing something. Piper was missing something. She was missing the fact that she couldn't see Anais's feet where they normally dangled off the arm rest of the couch. With her thoughts and chastisement abruptly halted, she also noted the silence coming from the room.

Normally, Anais would make soft noises in her sleep. Her breath would be ever so slightly heavy, not quite a snore, but the potential of one should her head tilt just a little more. Piper had learned the first night that Anais had stayed that the woman twitched in her sleep. She seemed restless in doing so, but was always fast asleep as she tossed and turned, trying to situate her limbs on a couch that was barely long enough for them.

Tonight there was no movement, no loud breaths or noncoherent mummering. There was just the sound of the rain on the roof and the occasional eruption of thunder. From where she was sat, for once she discovered Blue's feet absent Piper had sat up to look the rest of the couch over, Piper could see that the woman was not the only thing missing. The thick combat boots Anais wore everywhere and was strict on keeping off to the side of the door, were absent. As was the leather long coat Anais would often sport.

Piper's immediate fear that Anais had packed her bags and left was subdued by the sight of Anais's bag resting against the couch. The glint of steel during another flash of lighting showed her that the pistol Anais slept with was still under her pillow as well.

Knowing full well that however light a sleeper Piper thought herself to be, Blue was nearly tenfold, she allowed herself a reprieve from considering violent reasons behind Anais's disappearance. Still, Piper felt something in her reject the thought of minding her own business and returning to the floor to sleep. She was a nosy reporter after all.

Piper didn't bother checking upstairs for Anais. She knew the woman valued her and Nat's privacy above any curiosities she might have and would never intrude upon Nat while she was sleeping. That left Piper with only one place left to check.

Dogmeat greeted her from his makeshift house just outside her home. While she liked the dog well enough, she couldn't get the insistent worry out of her mind that he would decide her paper looked like a good place to use the bathroom.

"Where's she gone?" Piper asked, whispering despite the drumming of the rain against the rooftops and the distance from Nat.

Dogmeat offered her a whine and looked towards the roof.

"Thanks boy." Piper made sure to rub behind his ears as she had seen Anais do a thousand times.

The climb to the roof was nothing more than a few steps, but with the rain it granted the possibility of Piper's bare feet getting nicked on exposed metal or slipping against some damp sheet. Still, she trudged alone in only her shirt and jeans to reach the roof. It's sole occupant, dressed in a long leather coat and worn jeans, barefoot much like herself, had their back to her.

Anais's head was tilted back, her face and hair thoroughly soaked with rain. Each breath she drew lingered momentarily in the cool air of the night. The days that separated rain from snow were coming to their end all too quickly.

"Anais?" Piper spoke softly, not wanting to alarm the woman.

"Hmm?" Anais didn't open her eyes, merely took in a deep breath and exhaled it as Piper drew nearer.

"What are you doing out here?" Piper looked closer at Anais's face, noting a few drops of rain that were particularly close to her eyes. It was impossible to tell if they were tears. "You're going to get sick."

"I used to do this all the time." Anais smirked, just the corner of her mouth raising defiantly against Piper's worries. It was one of those things she did that set something in Piper on fire. Not with rage, but with slow burning embers that warmed her whole body.

"Why?" Piper asked, not with judgment or hostility, but with genuine curiosity.

At the first sight of Anais's eyes, Piper knew she had been crying. Her eyes, which Piper attributed to the majority of Anais's "old soul" looks, were rimmed with red and swollen.

"It made it easier to...think."

 _To cry, she means._ Piper thought. She held her tongue, not knowing what exactly Anais was thinking about, but had a pretty good guess.

"I'm sorry Blue." And she was. She felt something stabbing her, tearing at her insides when she thought of what Blue had gone through. _To be two hundred years out of your time with not a single familiar face to greet you._..Piper thought it a fate she would not be able to endure.

"I keep thinking this is some bad dream. A nightmare that I'll wake up from." Anais's voice caught and she swallowed. "It just...doesn't seem real."

Piper traced her eyes as they scanned Diamond City. Anais knew what the city had looked like before it was a city, back when baseball had actually been played here. There had been enough people to fill all the seats, Anais had told her. People would come from all around just to sit and be together to watch a game.

Piper remembered how Anais had looked when she pressed her to tell her more about baseball. About the truth behind Swatters, and the rules of the sport. In that moment, when Anais was telling her all about it, Piper could almost imagine it. She had practically heard the cheering crowds and the crack of the bat against the ball. Such lividity in Anais had amazed her. Still amazed her.

On their travels Anais would tell her about anything she could ask about.

 _What is this for?_ Piper would ask.

 _It's called a stop light._ Anais would smile at her, her cheeky smile as if a child were asking why the sky was blue, _It was used to direct traffic to prevent car accidents._

That was all it took to get them talking about how things used to be. Sometimes Anais would talk to Piper for hours about how the Old World operated. Other times something in her would shutdown and she would let the conversation die away after a few sentences.

 _She remembers it all._ Piper thought sullenly. _Everything as it was._

It was difficult to process what that must be like. Waking up to find your whole world changed wasn't like walking into your house to find your furniture rearranged. As many words as Piper liked to think she knew, she had nothing better yet marginally underwhelming as nightmare. And neither did Anais.

"I can't begin to imagine what it's like Blue." Was all she could think to say.

"I just feel...like I stepped out for one second, and when I came back..." Anais's face twisted as she tried to keep herself from crying.

Piper didn't know if she had gathered Anais in her arms or if the woman fell into them, but in an instant they were holding one another. Sobs racked Anais's body, the rain falling on both of them softened the sound of them by some small measure.

"I've lost them all." Anais cried out, chocking on the words that had been stuck in her chest since she first emerged from cryo.

Tears burned at the corners of Pipers eyes. One by one they fell into Anais's hair, mixing with the rain that pattered against them both. In the months that Piper had known Anais, she had not once seen the woman cry. Not when she had been shot, nor when she was stabbed, not even when she was being stitched up had Anais shed a single tear. She had screamed. Cursed and pounded her fist into the table as she bit down hard on a piece of wood, but her eyes had always been dry.

 _This is a different pain._ Piper realized. _One that a stimpak and stitches can't heal._

"Let it out Blue." Her hands began slow rhythms across Anais's back. "You don't have to keep it in anymore."

Hearing her words, or perhaps too far gone already, Anais released every sorrow she had felt. The echoes of such an anguished sound faded away between the cracks of thunder and flashes of lightning. If anyone had heard the raw sound of a heart breaking, they didn't not come out to investigate. Not even the city guard who had spied them on the roof moments ago, looked up to the women. With his eyes low, he took several back alleys away from the women, despite his rotations always leading him past them.

Something in Piper broke from hearing Anais's grief. She thought back to the mother she never got to know and the father who was taken from her too soon and she let herself sink into Anais's touch. Their cries and tears mixed with the rain and thunder, dying out only when the last drops had fallen. When morning came, it would greet two women tangled in each others arms, with not a tears left between them to shed.

When Piper thought back to hat had happened, she would think: _It is easier to cry in the rain._


End file.
